Thursday, March 6, 2008

Commentary: Enough already, just play

Golf is slowly — very slowly, of course — coming around to addressing ...

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excuse me ...

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... where was I? Oh, yeah, golf ...

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... bear with me ...

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... golf is in trouble.

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The problem is that it takes too long.

It takes too long at the pro level. It takes too long at the amateur level. It takes too long at the hack level.

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Is there anything more aggravating than being engaged in an activity that could be so enriching, and your progress ...

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... toward enjoying that endeavor, whatever that may be — say, for instance, reading a column on golf — is continually delayed and interrupted and becomes more trouble than it is worth. It is maddening. Yes?

Something may be done soon, starting at the top. Tiger Woods, the No. 1 player in the world, has spoken. Near the end of his most recent newsletter, Woods broached the subject of slow play and suggested ...

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... basically, that time has, well, long since passed when more concentrated and concerted efforts be undertaken. Usually when Woods speaks up on an issue, a solution is not, um, slow in coming. He wondered about conforming clubheads, and the PGA Tour instituted testing. He was at the fore in the debate about drug testing, and the Tour will begin asking for urine samples this summer.

Now he has suggested ...

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... that the Tour get serious about meting out penalties with teeth. That means strokes, not money, because strokes have a much greater impact.

Six years after the U.S. Golf Association — the game’s governing body in America and Mexico — capitulated on the issue by going to a two-tee, two-wave start at the Open at Bethpage State Park’s Black Course because it didn’t think it could get 156 players around the layout during the longest days of the year, it appears that the responsibility for injecting sanity into pace of play guidelines falls to PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem.

The Tour’s membership voted to dance around it with its already-tweaked “Rule 78” measure that penalized players at the lower end of the recognized cutline by eliminating them from the weekend mix because ... wait for it ...

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... rounds in which players were needing, on average, about 71 or 72 strokes, were taking too long to complete.

Finchem should not ...

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...delay.

Adam Scott, ranked fifth in the world, concurred when he was asked at the Johnnie Walker Classic in India about Woods’s comments. “People play way, way too slow,” the Aussie said. “They need to hurry up. They should start penalizing people. Just penalize them.”

This is what the LPGA is undertaking. Angela Park, in contention at last month’s SBS Open in Hawaii, got socked with two shots in the final round. Unfair? We say ...

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... no.

While there are no hard guidelines, the Rules of Golf address the issue of pace of play. Working off that, the PGA Tour could devise a more accountable system, especially in this era of ShotLink scoring systems and GPS technology. If every shot by every player can be tracked and recorded, how much more effort would it take to make an accounting of the time each player takes to hit those shots? We’re just asking.

If this seems like just a professional golf problem, you’re behind the times. Or maybe that’s the New York Times, which recently cited in a story that the excessive time to play 18 holes was driving recreational players out of the game.

Decreasing numbers of recreational players impact everything from ...

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... equipment companies to television ad revenues to course construction. It’s a top-down, trickle-up conundrum.

Everyone knows what the answer is. The question is how best to implement it. We have an idea ...

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excuse me ...

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which we’ll be happy to share ... in due time ...

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... hey, where are you going?